Thank you! Thank you! This is a treasure. I'll see if I can sleuth out the CSPAN video. What a rich discussion with this man, I still find it hard to believe he is 90 years old!

I'm also impressed this came via the Pew organization. I traced all the numeric data and other info on undocumented immigrants back to the Pew Hispanic Center. Their original data came from Census and INS counts, and they have augmented US labor reports to estimate current numbers. This blows me away -- how does one count undocumented immigrants? Pew seems to have a way.

Pew is a huge research organization, and it is well funded. I think it behooves everyone to check it out, see its mission, and scan through its various projects. http://pewresearch.org/

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"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
P. J. O'Rourke

Madame wrote:I'm also impressed this came via the Pew organization. I traced all the numeric data and other info on undocumented immigrants back to the Pew Hispanic Center. Their original data came from Census and INS counts, and they have augmented US labor reports to estimate current numbers. This blows me away -- how does one count undocumented immigrants? Pew seems to have a way.

They used the algorithm developed and used by the Census Bureau until a court case forbad them from using it. The algorithm was too good and nothing could stop a private organization from using it. Such projections always come with the usual caveat: it's not exact and the product is only as good as the data going in and the model that generated it.

Pew is a huge research organization, and it is well funded. I think it behooves everyone to check it out, see its mission, and scan through its various projects. http://pewresearch.org/

Ditto. I swear by them. I frequently have recourse to their studies when arguing here with folks. I don't know if they ever check them or my other favs, the General Accounting Office and the Statistical Abstract of the US, but I puts 'em out there.

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"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
P. J. O'Rourke[/quote]

Wow. What a fantastic read - equivalent to a first-year course on Contemprorary Islam and the West.

I found what Lewis had to say on the Danish Cartoon controversy particulalry interesting, and alarming in its implications....

Here you have two different opinions relating to an offense committed by a Muslim. That is not the case for the Danish cartoons. This is an offense committed by a non-Muslim. And here the plot thickens. This is discussed by all of the juridical authorities only in the case of a non-Muslim subject of a Muslim state. If a non-Muslim subject of a Muslim state says or does something offensive to the Prophet, he is to be tried — accused, tried, and if necessary, punished. The jurists on the whole tend to take a rather mild view of this offense. They say, well, he is not a Muslim; he doesn't accept Mohammed as the Prophet; we know that. So saying that Mohammed is no prophet does not constitute this offense. It has to be more specifically insulting than that. And, as I say, there is an elaborate juridical literature and case law on this subject.

What is never discussed at all — it is never considered — is an offense committed by a non-Muslim in a non-Muslim country. That, according to the unanimous opinion of all of the doctors of the holy law is no concern of Islamic law, which brings us back to the case of Denmark. Does this mean that Denmark, along with the rest of Europe is now considered part of the Islamic lands, and that the Danes, like the rest, are therefore dhimmis, non-Muslim subjects of the Muslim state?